‘Dark Skies’ full of clouds without silver lining

If given the option to be haunted by ghosts or aliens, the better choice is go with ghosts as according to “Dark Skies,” aliens will financially and socially ruin your life. At least ghosts are cheap and tend to keep the activity only in the privacy of your home.

“Dark Skies” basically mimics every aspect of a typical scary movie, minus all the thrills and scares. There is the extremely slow start, false build up and cheap scares. The only difference is they replaced the paranormal entities with aliens. Even the cheap scares lacked the element of surprise since they were all spoiled by the TV commercials however, they manage to hit the mark with every scary movie cliché. As usual the kids are used as scapegoats, at first, when the problems begin. The husband doesn’t believe that anything is wrong even though the evidence is obvious. You also can’t forget that popping pills solves everything as the wife drugs herself when things become too intense.

The movie follows a normal family that lives in a picturesque neighborhood in the suburbs. However, this family has some serious drama behind the scenes. The father has been unemployed for some time and is desperately searching for a job. The mother is stressed with her job since she has to take care of the bills and the oldest son is going through his awkward and angry preteen years. The only member of the family without a problem is the six year old son. If anything the movie was more of a dramatic Lifetime-style movie since things go from bad to worse.

These aliens apparently don’t understand that humans have bills to pay and they caused so much financial trouble that it was stressful to watch. They cost the mom her job since these aliens have taken over their brains and control her to break down while at work. They give the oldest son a seizure so a hospital bill, force them to install an expensive security system in their home, wastes their food and a lot more. To top everything off their neighbors and friends are turning away from them with all the strange things happening. At this point in the movie ghosts and demons are suddenly looking friendlier.

For reasons unknown, the writers had to add a really awkward and corny preteen romance scene, which was weird to sit through. Also, there were some disturbing scenes in order to demonstrate that the aliens had control of their minds, but they were poorly executed and tried too hard to look freaky when, in reality, it was almost a bit silly. Another oddity within the movie was during the night scenes as the camera followed character’s gaze you could tell that there was a flashlight connected to the camera.

“Dark Skies” was, overall, predictable as the climax attempted to delude audience into thinking one way when in reality it seem clear what was coming. The next set of writers attempting to take on the alien genre should either get very creative or take some inspiration from 2002’s “Signs” at least that movie made an attempt at a unique plot.

4.5/10